mean that our future bliss shall be changeless, yet it may prove quite otherwise; and the time in future ages may come, when all the purity and the bliss in existence may be confined to his own essence, and all the universe besides may be a chaos of sin and desolation.

Author. And besides that, my friend Arminian, God, you say, does not interfere with the freedom of the will, and therefore, he cannot keep you in heaven if he would, provided you should make up your mind not to stay there. If you can point out a way in which, consistently with free agency, he can prevent you from sinning in heaven, you will show a way by which he could have prevented our sinning on earth, and drawing down infinite ruin upon our heads: if you say that he did not choose to employ that way, you in effect assert that he did not choose to save us, by the only mode practicable, from sin and eternal woe! And what is this but taking Calvinistic ground outright?

Calvinist. Well, to continue the subject with which I begun, I am heartily glad to find that we can travel the same road with regard to the divine decrees, and the utter exclusion of human works and human will from the business of salvation; but our road forks at length, I perceive; you assume that God has decreed to save all men, and that in due time he will effectually call and bring them in, if not in time, at some period beyond; here, then, we must part, for our road branches into two, between which there is a wide separation. You admit the doctrine of election to be scriptural; why not then the doctrine of reprobation also, for the one presupposes the other?

Author. Not always. Do our elections at the polls presuppose the reprobation of the public? On the contrary, the good of the mass, who are not elected, is consulted, and designed to be subserved by the instrumentality of those who are. When an individual is proposed for an office among us, we inquire whether he will be likely to prove a faithful public servant-whether he will be true to the interests of his constituents-and being satisfied on this head, we give him our suffrages; thus it is seen, that in electing some to distinguished places, instead of reprobating the residue, we propose the general good. God elects on the same principle. Why were the Jews elected to be God's peculiar people? Evidently that the true worship of God might be pre

served in the world, until the time should be ripe for its more general diffusion. In electing Pharaoh (in the order of his providence) to be king of Egypt, Jehovah had views to the good of the world at large; not only that he might show his power in him, but also that his name might be declared throughout all the earth. (Rom. ix. 17.) The Savior himself was elected to ends of universal benevolence. "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth: I have put my Spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house. (Isaiah xlii. 1, 3. 4, 6, 7.) Christ elected his apostles also, not for their own exclusive good, but as his instruments in diffusing the blessings of the gospel to mankind at large. And those who through faith in the gospel are brought to a present knowledge and enjoyment of God, are far from being to be considered the whole harvest of grace in the world; they are but "a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." (James i. 18.) Now to all acquainted with Jewish usages, it is known that the first-fruits, when presented as an offering to the Lord, were (if accepted) considered as an earnest of the successful ingathering of the entire harvest; to this fact Paul alludes, when he says, "for if the first-fruits be holy, the lump is also holy." (Rom. xi. 16.) And this remark from him is particularly worthy of notice, when we consider its application; for reprobated as were at that time the bulk of the Jewish people, yet they are all to be brought in at last (as the apostle argues) for the first-fruits of the nation (the patriarchal fathers) were holy: "And as is the root, so are the branches." The apostle introduces the same figure also when maintaining that the whole creation shall be redeemed, and that the bliss of any portion thereof must necessarily be incomplete until that important event is consummated; there is (he represents) an earnest looking and longing for it on the part of all creatures. "And not only they, but our

selves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit; even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." (Rom. viii. 23.) He again employs the figure of the first-fruits when treating on the resurrection of the dead; he considers the presentation and acceptance of Christ our spiritual head as the first-fruits from the grave, to be a sure pledge of the ultimate gathering in of the whole harvest of mankind. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule, and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. xv. 20—28.) In this view of election there is nothing repulsive to common sense, to justice, to goodness, as there undeniably is in the Calvinistic view of the subject. On the contrary, all is here consistent, beautiful, benevolent; the elect of God are but the first fruits of his grace; the present earnest of that victory over sin, and assimilation to infinite purity, which it will eventually achieve in the whole human race.

Calvinist. Very pretty, I grant; very plausible too, to mere human reason, but we are not to estimate things by the standard of our frail judgments; we are to remember that we are infinite offenders against God, and as such, deserving of his holy displea sure to all eternity. Consequently, we

Arminian. Stay! I wish to know how we can deserve God's displeasure to all eternity, if, (as you and the author both maintain,) we are not free agents; we do only such things as he foreordained we should do; we cannot be righteous except he see fit to make us so, and yet for not being what we could not be,

we are deserving of the great Jehovah's infinite displeasure! Why, my dear sir, one must have a credulity equal to an earthquake to swallow all this!

Author. You swallow it, nevertheless, my friend, as well as he, for I have proven sin to have been foreordained on your principles as well as on his; your notion of man's free agency I have shown to be a fantasm, and consequently, if it is unjust and cruel in God to inflict endless suffering on his ground, it is equally so on your's. The doctrine of endless misery is equally indefensible on either; it reflects equal discredit upon the divine character on both. Calvinist and Arminian. Yes, if mere human reason is to be the judge.

Author. As a human being, I can have no other than human reason; I must either exercise that, or none; if none, why are the claims of God upon my love, my homage, my confidence, pressed upon my consideration? If my understanding cannot comprehend the acts of my Creator, I cannot then know whether they are wise or foolish, good or evil, and therefore I cannot tell whether he is entitled to my love or my hatred, my admiration or my contempt. The very fact of our being called on to adore and serve him, presupposes our capacity to understand the nature and the grounds of our obligations to him. Away! then, with your senseless decrials of human reason, for Jehovah himself has honored it by frequent appeals to it in his word.

Calvinist. Well, waiving that matter for the present, let us attend further to the original point between us you have shown that election does not necessarily imply reprobation. I grant it does not, but I still contend that there are some cases of special reprobation brought to view in the scriptures. Take the following as instances: "But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God, should shine unto them." (2 Cor. iv. 3, 4.) "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." (2 Thes. ii. 11, 12.)

Author. I have not meant to deny the scripture doctrine of reprobation; on the contrary, I have shown that whilst some are

called to eminent gospel privileges, others, (at least in this life,) are excluded from all participation therein. Yet, thanks to God! we are not left in hopeless darkness as to the final fate of even these reprobates; the great apostle has most satisfactorily cleared up this point: he has shown that there is to be an eventual and universal ingathering of reprobated Israel, when the fulness of the (once rejected, but subsequently elected) Gentiles be come in; in the very casting off of the Jewish people, mercy was designed to the rest of the world. "I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. Now, if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?" (Rom. xi. 11, 12, 15.) This will show the purpose of God in sending them “ strong delusions ;" and it also shows us the end of the damnation consequent thereof: the same is also expressed in the following. "For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief; even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” (Ibid. 30-32.) We see then that the "lost," to whom, in the days of the apostles, the gospel was "hid," were not by Paul considered as irrecoverably so; it was "the lost" whom Christ came "to seek and to save." Neither does it follow, that because some seem at the present in a far-gone condition of darkness and sin, they are eternally to remain in it.

Calvinist. What meant the Savior, then, when he represented such only to be his sheep as hear his voice and follow him? And does not his promise that he gives unto them eternal life, and that they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of his hand, imply on the face of it that he will not do the same for all the human race?

Author. It certainly implies that he does not do the same for all, but not that he never will. It is granted that some are his people in a peculiar sense, and that others are not so at the present time; but if we affirm that the same shall to all eternity be the